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kgottleib
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vSphere Web Client is so bad that my experience managing and supporting VMware has turn to....

Purpose of this post is simple and obvious...  bring back development to thick client.  THANKS!

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TBKing
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"Hire a dozen usability engineers and just redo the whole thing top to bottom.  The technology works.  The administrative interfaces and docs and support sites are just beyond brutal."

That will also give them another opportunity to re-name and re-bundle the products like they are so fond of doing!

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sp4rt4n
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Hi @ all,

to everyone who wants to change something or influence the development process for BOTH clients, I would recommend to participate in the recently started survey by VMWare!

For closer information I would additionally recommend to sign up for the beta and take advantage of the communication there and to test sth out.

vSphere Client survey

Again: this survey was initiated by VMWare, if you like some VMware employee to listen to your opinion, please participate.

regards,

sp4rt4n

Scott_G1
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I took this survey as well, thanks for the link. I am one who does not like the web client either, but hopefully with the survey VMware is taking it seriously and listening to the community.

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dbringer
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Thanks for the link I took the survey!

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dennisluvm
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Hi all,

Thank you sp4rt4n for your help posting this survey.  I have another one, and I thought this time I would do my own dirty work.


This survey is geared toward understanding where we need to work on feature usability, and is designed to be taken twice, once for vSphere Client and once for vSphere Web Client, if you have the time.


http://www.surveymethods.com/EndUser.aspx?F2D6BAA3FAB7AFA7F0

Please feel free to forward this to anyone you know what would like to contribute.  Your responses will directly impact how we move forward and improve our products.

Thank you all in advance for you feedback!

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andreaspa
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Hej,

Jag är inte på kontoret just nu, återvänder igen den 20/10.

Vänliga hälsningar,

Andreas Paulsson

<

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iSystems
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We completed both surveys.

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RichKasting
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This is a continuing downhill slide.  A few years ago, VMWare tried to limit VRAM with vSphere 5.0.  I got a call from a customer satisfaction person.  I explained how our IT group doesn't just get money and how negatively this impacted us.

She set up a follow up call with some VMWare sales folks.  I explained my situation and over the course of about a half hour they continued to pop out their buzz words until they finally came back to reality and didn't think they could do anything for us.  I told them plainly that if they didn't back off on the VRAM item, we'd be forced to convert to Hyper-V, eventually.

We sat on version 4.something for a really long time and finally VMWare changed their policy with vSphere 5.1.  It was the tough talk of myself and a thousand other folks that got their head screwed back on tight.

Unfortunately, with version 5.1 they decided to introduce a half-baked SSO product that left us with a broken vCenter on a few ocassions.  At one point, a VMWare support person told me it would simply be easier to reinstall on the newest version.  W also had some serious ESXi issues during this period.  Basically, all the products in that release were unstable.  We had a whole month where we couldn't even see our ESXi hosts after about a half day and had to keep rebooting them.

I spent a lot of long hours compensating for products that weren't ready for market.  They came very close to getting pulled from our environment.

Now, the web interface has been a growing concern and may be the final nail in the coffin for them.  I've already got Microsoft Server DataCenter licensing for all of my servers.  Why pay extra for vSphere?

Simply put, if VMWare doesn't remember that they need to provide VALUE to their customers in the form of improved reliability and ease of management, they are just going to become another point of failure that professional IT staff seek to eliminate.

VMWare, if your budget isn't 70% R&D and 30% everything else, fire you top execs, put someone with technical expertise in their places, and get your house in order.  No more Sales and Marketing execs!

kgottleib
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Great post, thanks for contributing.   I find it amusing to some degree that VMware actually wants a customer survey around this web client...  I would simply ask VMware "do you see anything in this post that would indicate your customers think the web client is favorable in any way over other the traditional C# client??   Do you really need a survey for this?  if you do, then you aren't even attempting to use your own product. "

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RichKasting
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Exactly!

They appear to believe that if they keep asking the same questions over and

over, they'll get the answers they want. In reality, they are alienating

their customer base.

It's apparent to me there are too many sales and marketing folks in upper

management, as they are too good at talking and very poor at listening.

Even when that listening is costing them their bottom line.

We'll see what pans out. All IT products are eventually doomed to the bit

bucket, so we'll see if VMWare buys it sooner or later.

On Tue, Oct 21, 2014 at 8:40 AM, kgottleib <communities-emailer@vmware.com>

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mmango
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I can't believe the developed this crappy interface

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jlong
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I'd just like

loading.PNG

Sorry about that.

I'd just like to add

loading.PNG

Computer is running slow, sorry about that.

I'd just like to add that it's really

loading.PNG

Ok, this is getting annoying. Again I apologize.

I'd just like to add that it's really frustrating because of all

loading.PNG

Damn it I give up. I'm going back to the Thick Client!

Edited for effect.

adamjg
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jlong wrote:

I'd just like

busybar.png

Sorry about that.

I'd just like to add

busybar.png

Computer is running slow, sorry about that.

I'd just like to add that it's really

busybar.png

Ok, this is getting annoying. Again I apologize.

I'd just like to add that it's really frustrating because of all

busybar.png

Damn it I give up. I'm going back to the Thick Client!

That's a great point.  I have a really good thought on this that I'd like to add. The most important thing to consider is

Capture.jpg

devzero
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i`m doing IT for 15 years and every solution i know where a native gui was turned into a web gui - in comparison to the native gui, the web gui sucked.

Sekondant
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How many pages of rant posts does VMware need to make them stop developing the Webclient and keep the C+ client alive? How many of us do they want to run into the arms of the competition because of a dysfunctional web interface? And how serious do we think they are when they're telling us things will get better with the next generation of the webclient?

How much longer can I keep from upgrading to virtual machine level 10 or higher? I'll make it until VMware has dumped the C+ client and we will have successfully migrated to HyperV.

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spectVM
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My favorite in all this is what they have done for ESXi 6.

They have finally listened to us and gave a desktop client. Wait till you see it. :smileyplain:

The a**holes simply wrapped IE in a desktop shell and are now calling this a desktop client. If this isn't the true definition of adding insults to injuries, I am not sure what else is.

Yes folks, we will soon have the pleasure of installing a useless desktop application that wraps a browser for us. Basically, we are too incompetent to open up a browser and type in the url to web client. Smiley Sad

devzero
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i`m just watching some interesting stormagic presentation/techtalk and what is being said in this video after 10:45 gave me a smile....

StorMagic SvSAN Introduction and Demos - YouTube

Alistar
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I will jump in the bandwagon on this one. The Web Client is atrocious, abysmal catastrophe! My main concern is that everything is SO difficult to find, and you have to expand an item to see its contents, and then expand THESE. The tabs inside tabs make no sense, everything is fragmented and what I'm used to see in the "thick" client on one screen takes two, or worse. I won't even mention the "speed" (unless you are running on localhost) or the resources the browser consumes while using Flash.

I'm sorry but the designer of the UI didn't completely get a grip of what administrators need to access (the more information on one screen with minimal clicking the better).

Stop by my blog if you'd like 🙂 I dabble in vSphere troubleshooting, PowerCLI scripting and NetApp storage - and I share my journeys at http://vmxp.wordpress.com/
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nzmarkc
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It is a shame when a situation gets so bad that customers (and even evangelists) have to openly vent to get a company to listen. But please listen closely VMWare. These comments have validity. I teach the vSphere:ICM course at a NZ polytech, and the web client is giving my students a negative view of the vSphere products. And with this sort of negative experience, when they go out into industry, what hypervisor system do you think they will shy away from, and what hypervisor systeMS do you think they will go to?

Please make this right for all of your customers and customers-to-be.

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markzz
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I've been working with VMWare for near 10 years. We have seen the company move from a very small obscure organization who introduced a mainframe idea of LPARs to the x86 and therefore commodity hardware world..To now a primary player in any IT market.

After so many years of maintaining an established relationship with VMWare  and seeing this company move from strength to strength I'd like to continue to support them with their new and improved WEB Client interface. But sadly I can not.

Just like when VMWare decided to change their licensing model to an allocated memory model, We YES us the customers pushed back.

VMWare lets get a couple of things straight.. Interpreted languages are SLOW because they are interpreted and are not compiled and therefore optimized.

It may surprise you that many IT workers do not have i7 quadcore 8+GB RAM PC's at their disposal, regardless why move from a C# compiled interface to an interpreted flash based interface..

Lets list some of the issues.. (I don't want you to fix them. I want a C# compiled client that is stable and quick for my Windows PC's. I'll forgo a Linux client if need be)

The WEB Client.

It's slow..... I work in the VI Client all day.. If have have to wait just 10 seconds for a response times the 1000 actions per day YOU have impacted my productivity.

Security.... WEB Browsers are some of our most insecure applications, this is due to the very nature of what a WEB browser does. Why put our most critical interface in an insecure application which is used to view unknown content in unknown destinations.

Flash... Flash has been abandoned by Adobe or so they say. Funny they have just released a new version in an attempt to patch some of the many issues. Now it's slower than ever but secure at the very moment in time.. Tomorrow it will change.

Resources....  I don't have 3 or 4 GB to allocate to the java heap size.. I have another 30 applications to use per day. Unfortunately many of these require java also.

Optimization...  Yes VMWare we know C# platform optimized and compiled code is expensive to write. You also need skilled programers rather than out sourced or off shored to Java developers in less skilled locations,, But they are cheap.. Bless their cotton sandles.

Interface...   Now I'd like to mention I'm no "i" fan. But you must appreciate the development Apple put into their products. Apple know what the term FOCUS GROUP means.. VMWare you really would benefit from understanding how a focus group works and very importantly why they are necessary. The WEB Interface is not intuitive at all.. 5 ways to do the same thing.. You'd think it was designed by Microsoft..

Interface again.. We don't need to use the entire color pallet. We use this as a tool to make our bread.. Keep it simple.

Performance....  Did I mention Optimized code. I'm sure I did but lets reiterate the point.. No interpreted language WEB interface is going to be as snappy as an compiled application.

Quality Development... the quantity of code cut by cheap resources does not equate to a well written application by skilled programers. Are you sure you haven't out sourced this task to Microsoft.?

Microsoft.... Let the heavens rain down on me... Hyper-V is catching up.. it's very feature rich, horribly slow to administer via SCCM,, almost as slow as the VMWare WEB Client. But it does crash as often..

Functionality.... No Sys Admin worth his/her salt is going to administer their VMWare environment via a phone or tablet. Nor are they going to expose the interface to the WEB.. Many currently make the VI Client available via Citrix or the like.. So the initiating PC is isolated from the destination. Your kidding your self if you think management via a phone is a requirement. It's a gimmick. It screams Microsoft.

I do hope I have not offended anyone.

I do hope VMWare are listening to their customers.

I do hope VMWare learn from Microsoft’s mistakes eg. Windows 8.

I do hope VMWare learn to use focus groups.

I do hope VMWare drop this WEB Client concept and invest the $s into employing the correct people to redesign and re-write a compiled interface to accompany what has to date been an excellent product "ESXi", so we can continue to support VMWare and the business` we manage into the future.